The term “Easter egg” is used metaphorically to refer to a hidden message, joke or feature incorporated into a movie, computer program or other media entity for users to stumble across and appreciate.

There’s something at once ironic and appropriate about this term in connection with a Google Easter egg — a sort of “Good Friday Easter egg” — I came upon some time ago when I happened to Google the words “God died.” Google’s own results feature proposed the following identifying information for this search:

God’s not dead — but God did die on Good Friday. This way of speaking about Jesus’ death is uncontroversial among Catholic and Orthodox Christians, and generally also in the historic Reformation churches (those in the Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican traditions).

In fact, most Evangelicals and other Protestants will agree with statements like “God died for our sins” — until they realize what this entails for one of their hot-button issues: Mary, acknowledged by Catholics, Orthodox and the historic Reformation traditions, but generally not by many Evangelicals — as Theotokos or Mother of God. (This was never a problem for me personally, by the way. My theological background was initially Reformed, and we had no problem calling Mary Theotokos.)

A few months ago I had a discussion with an Evangelical Christian that went precisely this way. He affirmed, repeatedly, that God died for our sins, until I pointed out that if it’s right to say that God died, then we must also say that God was born; and if God was born, then his mother is the mother of God.

At this point my Evangelical friend developed cold feet. Although he is entirely orthodox on the Incarnation and the dual natures of Christ, the paradoxical consequences of the Incarnation, particularly around the notion that Mary gave birth to God, gave him pause about the appropriateness of this manner of expression. “If I said that ‘God’ died for my sins,” he began, “I was being careless, because that is not what I believe.”

This, I think, is unfortunate. I don’t think my Protestant friend was being careless at all. I think he was talking like a Christian — the way Christians, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant have talked for nearly two millennia, from the New Testament to classic English hymnody.

One can say if one wishes that Charles Wesley was “being careless” when he wrote, in the magnificent hymn “And Can It Be that I Should Gain?”, the awesome lines:

Amazing love! How can it be
That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be
That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

And again, in “O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done”:

O Love divine, what has thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!

One can say Isaac Watts was being careless when he wrote, in “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”:

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, my God!

One can say Martin Luther was being careless when he wrote:

God did not derive his divinity from Mary; but it does not follow that it is therefore wrong to say that God was born of Mary, that God is Mary’s Son, and that Mary is God’s mother...She is the true mother of God and bearer of God...Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God, etc. For God and man are one person, one Christ, one Son, one Jesus, not two Christs.”

But the testimony of sacred scripture isn’t so easily dismissed. And one cannot read this Evangelical terminological delicacy into scripture without tying oneself in exegetical knots.

The Testimony of Scripture

The Bible very seldom says in so many words “Jesus Christ is God.” For the most part, we have to be willing to follow the implications of the language to see what the authors are really saying.

It’s possible, of course, to try to avoid the implications of this language by reinterpreting titles such as “Son of God,” “Lord” and so forth to refer to something other than divinity. Arian-type sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons do it all the time.

Still, if we’re willing to follow the implications of the language, it’s pretty clear that it’s correct to say that Jesus is God. And it’s equally clear that the death of Jesus is the death of God in the flesh.

One can try to dance around it — but only at the cost of dancing around the deity of Christ itself, by resorting to the same sorts of exegetical dodges that Arian-type sects utilize to deny Jesus’ divinity.

For instance, when St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit,” all orthodox Christians recognize what Arian heretics deny, that Paul uses Kurios as a divine title, like the Hebrew term Adonai (“Lord”) used in place of the divine Name when the Hebrew scriptures were read aloud.

But when St. Paul writes one chapter earlier, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26), my Evangelical friend must shift gears and perhaps say something like “Well, in this case ‘Lord’ doesn’t refer to Jesus’ divine Lordship, but only to his human authority” — a move he was already willing to make with Elizabeth’s acclamation of Mary as “the mother of my Lord” (Luke 1:43). This is a dangerous precedent.

He will also have to reinterpret the phrase “Son of God” to refer to something other than Jesus’ divine Sonship when St. Paul writes: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10).

Can “His Son” (i.e., God’s Son) be reinterpreted to refer to something other than Jesus’ divine Sonship? I suppose, if one is bent on it. Angels are sons of God. We are all sons of God. There are other interpretive possibilities also. But would any orthodox Christian, reading the term “God’s Son” anywhere else in Romans, interpret it as anything other than a reference to Christ’s Divine Sonship?

For instance, when Paul describes God “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin” (Romans 8:3), are Evangelicals in any doubt that this refers to Christ’s Divine Sonship? Do they really want to go on to say, “But when he talks three chapters earlier about ‘the death of His Son,’ that’s not a reference to Christ’s divine Sonship, but to something else”?

Then there’s St. Peter’s affirmation: “You killed the Author of life, but God raised him from the dead” (Acts 3:15).

The Greek term here translated “author,” archegos (from arche, meaning “beginning” or “first cause”), means “originator,” or perhaps “prince” or “captain.” It appears four times in the New Testament, always in reference to Jesus. The writer to the Hebrews clearly uses it in the sense of “originator” in Hebrews 12:2, calling Jesus “the archegos and finisher of [our] faith” (i.e., the originator and completer, the beginning and the end). He also calls Jesus “the archegos of salvation” (Hebrews 2:10), i.e., the source or originator of salvation. Then there’s Acts 5:31: “God exalted him at his right hand as Archegos and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” Note that Jesus is archegos in heaven at the right hand of the Father.

Do Evangelicals really want to try to contrive some sense in which Jesus is the “archegos of life” without reference to his divinity? They could always follow the Watchtower translation and render this “the Chief Agent of life” (whatever that means), although I don’t know what the best Greek experts would say about this.

If we follow the usual translation, “You killed the Author of life,” and if “Author of life” is, as I would argue, a transparent circumlocution for “God” (chosen for irony: the Author of life put to death!), then Peter is pretty straightforwardly saying “You killed God.”

The Lord’s death. The death of God’s Son. The Author of life killed. One can tie oneself in knots trying to avoid it, but it’s there for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Theological Clarifications

Obviously when Christians say “God died” we don’t mean that God ceased being God, or that the divine nature suffered any kind of harm or diminution. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, suffered and died in his humanity, not his divinity.

Yet Jesus, while he has two natures, is one person; and whatever is done by or happens to him is done by or happens to a person, not a nature. It might be fair to say that Jesus forgave sins by virtue of his divinity. Yet when he forgave sins, he forgave sins; they were not forgiven by a nature, but by a person, the one person Jesus Christ.

Likewise, while the divine nature knows neither fatigue nor hunger, when the scriptures speak of Jesus hungering (in the wilderness) or sleeping (in the boat), they do not say “His human nature hungered” or “His body slept,” but that Jesus hungered or slept.

The danger of ignoring or neglecting this singularity of personhood uniting the divine and human natures is the heretical error known as Nestorianism, which treats Jesus as a human person united to the divine person of God the Son (see CCC §466) — i.e., making him a juxtaposition of two separate persons rather than God become man. (Whether Nestorius himself, the fifth-century archbishop of Constantinople condemned in 431 by the ecumenical council of Ephesus, actually embraced the heresy named after him is an important historical question, but the heresy itself is clearly contrary to the historic Christian faith.)

Christians have long recognized that pondering the mystery of the Incarnation, of God become man, leads to glorious paradoxes, highlighting the shocking, mind-blowing force of what God has done. To worship Jesus is to worship the God-Man, true God and true man. We worship him because he is God, but it would be wrong to say that the one we worship is not a man. We can thus say that we worship a man, a man who is God.

We say that God became a man, i.e., a human. Of course, Jesus started life as all men do, as a zygote and then an embryo, a fetus and a baby. Can we then say God became a zygote, an embryo, a fetus, a baby? Yes.

And if God became a baby, then God was born. And if God was born of Mary, then Mary gave birth to God; she is the bearer or mother of God. (This manner of ascribing anything pertaining to Jesus to the one Word Incarnate, and thus speaking of them with reference to either of his two natures, is called “communication of idioms.”)

Theo-Logic

In addition to the textual evidence from the Bible, there’s the simple logic that follows from acknowledging two simple truths:

1. Jesus is both God and man.
2. Jesus died on the cross.

From these two premises, without adding anything, we can say:

3. The one who died on the cross is both God and man.
4. One who is both God and man died on the cross.

If this makes some uncomfortable, we can further clarify thus:

5. The one who died on the cross [in his incarnate humanity] is both God and man.
6. One who is both God and man died on the cross [in his incarnate humanity].

However, the statements remain equally correct with or without the bracketed clarifying phrases. And these statements remain true even if we highlight only one of Jesus’ natures, instead of both:

7. The one who died on the cross [in his humanity] is man [and God].
8. The one who died on the cross [in his humanity] is God [and man].
9. One who is man [and God] died on the cross [in his humanity].
10. One who is God [and man] died on the cross [in his humanity].

Drop the bracketed clarifiers, and you have these statements, equally true when properly understood:

11. The one who died on the cross is man.
12. The one who died on the cross is God.
13. One who is man died on the cross.
14. One who is God died on the cross.

And that’s the ball game. If it is true to say “The one who died on the cross is God,” then to the question “Who died on the cross?” we can answer “God.” If we can say “[One who is] God died on the cross,” then we can say, “God died on the cross.”

This doesn’t need to be a point of contention between Christians. It probably wouldn’t be as big a deal for many Evangelicals, but for excessive sensitivity around the ancient, ecumenical Marian title of Theotokos, mother of God.

This Good Friday, as we remember our Evangelical brethren in the petitions for “our brothers and sisters who share our faith in Jesus Christ,” let us pray that our Lord draws us all deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation, and of the love of our God who died for us all.

This article is central to issues and problems in Catholicism. If it’s not Peter being the best among all the Apostles to be held out the man among all the Jesus (not the Catholics), then it’s Many the mother of Jesus a (not God), for God and Jesus both existed long before Mary came into the picture.

Mary was just a women who in herself had to be saved by her own son, the Son of God. Yes special among women, favored and highly exalted, but with no specials powers, gifts or abilities other then be chosen as human vessel for the Son of God.

If you kept listening to the Catholic errand teachings next they will have their followers believing that the Holy Spirit was the creative work of Catholicism. Run don’t walk from articles and teachings of what appears hear in this article all because desire the have Mary elevated to levels unknown to God…just look at very words of Jesus Himself twice told Mary in effect at cross and elsewhere women you are not my mother.

Posted by GregB on Monday, Apr, 21, 2014 4:39 PM (EST):

@Tom in AZ:
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It has to do with surrounding cultures attempting to alter the religious self understanding of Christians/Catholics, their effects on our faith claims, and the faithful transmission of the Deposit of Faith from one generation to another.
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In ancient times the Old Testament was also shocking. Monotheism being preached in opposition to polytheism. The God of Exodus fighting on the the side of a slave underclass against the power elites as represented by Pharaoh. This was very counter-cultural.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Monday, Apr, 21, 2014 2:41 PM (EST):

@GregB: Would you please explain how the Northern/Southern dichotomy relates to this discussion? I think I might see what you mean, but I need it spelled out more directly.

Posted by GregB on Monday, Apr, 21, 2014 12:55 PM (EST):

If I am not grossly misreading the ongoing exchange it appears to revolve around what I like to call Northern Kingdom ways of thinking, a.k.a. the Lost Tribes of Israel. When Israel split into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, the Northern Kingdom became so assimilated into the surrounding cultures that they lost their sense of Jewish religious and cultural identity, and were the first to go into exile.

More and more I think I may be “hearing” something familiar in your “voice.” Is Peggy your real name? By any chance have you have ever dialogued with me under any other handle? Or have I ever addressed you by another handle?

If you understood the concept of the communication of idioms, it is hard for me to understand what clarity or light you thought you were adding by saying “I asked why you think it’s important to shock people with vague language, ‘idioms’ if you will.” Was this only a play on words?

In fact I do not see anything in Jeremy’s correspondence that suggests any actual danger of scandal. Jeremy is deeply concerned about a possible connection between the Theotokos and what he sees as the erroneous Catholic belief in Mary’s Immaculate Conception, so from Jeremy’s point of view there is a concern about scandal (a misleading phrase leading people to doctrinal error). However, I don’t see that Jeremy’s concern puts him in any particular danger of sin; and obviously as a Catholic I don’t think the Immaculate Conception is doctrinal error (and moreover I’ve already pointed out that the Immaculate Conception is not closely related to the Theotokos anyway).

All of this should have been obvious from my last response. If you think Jeremy’s initial post raises some concern about danger of sin that I haven’t addressed, perhaps you can clarify it.

In addition, no, I don’t think the “argumentative fumblings” referred to pose any proximate occasion of sin for anyone involved. I think Jeremy has argued with integrity well befitting a Christian, and with winsome humility as well (thus his self-diagnosed “fumblings”). I don’t think he has given anyone proximate occasion of sin, and I hope I have engaged him without doing so either. As for my prickly response to you, the jury is still out IMO, but our quarrel is not a very direct consequence of the communication of idioms.

You say “I’m seeing little evidence that ‘discussion, explanation and efforts at mutual understanding’ will ‘overcome communication problems’ so much as create and compound them.” Perhaps you haven’t paid sufficient attention to my actual discussion with Jeremy, who is actually interested in the project in question and in moving it forward. Watch and learn.

No matter how much confusion they could possibly cause in some quarters, we cannot drop the language of the Holy Trinity, of God the Father and Jesus the Son of God. The latter is grounded directly in divine revelation, and the term Trinity is inextricably bound up with the unfolding and transmission of Christian faith in sacred tradition. Your point about the last 20 centuries potentially being a “blip” in the grand scheme of things is well taken, but the early centuries of Christian faith are of irrevocable, normative importance for later centuries.

Trinity is a term with irreplaceable ecumenical force, a term uniting Catholics, Orthodox Christians, the Oriental Churches, Anglicans and Protestants of every stripe (not counting sub-Christian sects that deny, you know, the theology of the Trinity). Perhaps most decisively, the language of the Trinity is deeply embedded in our liturgical tradition, and most if not all others. Lex orandi, lex credendi.

The core belief of the Church on this point is Father, Son and Holy Spirit in one God. There is in God a threefoldness that we cannot drop without ceasing to be Christians. “Trinity” is scarcely more than a verbal acknowledgement of this core fact, the threefoldness of God. The root meaning of “Trinity” is “triad,” “a set of three,” “state of being threefold”; indeed, so well established is this sense of “trinity” as “a set of three” that it is often used to refer to other groups of three things. (For example, last year Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review, said the Affordable Care Act was sold “on a trinity of lies.”)

Any possible replacement term would have to do justice to the essential threefoldness of God in Christian belief, so it’s hard to see what possible advantage another term could offer. A portmanteau like “Triune” is slightly more evocative, in that it gets at the unity of God as well as his threefoldness, but it’s not so much a potential alternative for Trinity as a further specification of it. Anyway, “Triunity” obviously brings its own expressive challenges, beginning with the fact that unlike “trinity” it doesn’t immediately connote something to people unfamiliar with Christian theology.

Christian language can change, but it must change organically and in continuity with the past. The likelihood of the term Trinity (and equivalent terms in other languages) being dropped from Christian vocabulary even over many millennia to come approaches zero.

The term Theotokos is obviously far less crucial than the term Trinity, but many of the above considerations apply in one form or another in this case also. Here there is a substantial Protestant contingent that is not on board, but otherwise it unites the other Christian groups, including Protestants in the historic Reformation traditions. It is practically nothing more than a formalization of Elizabeth’s acclamation of Mary as “the mother of my Lord.”

Posted by GregB on Sunday, Apr, 20, 2014 8:42 PM (EST):

I’ve been reading the discussion. Christ came both to redeem humankind from its sins, and to establish His Church in the New Covenant ratified in His Own Blood. The Church is called the Mystical Body of Christ. This being the case the Mystical Body of Christ would be expected to manifest a mystical mode of operation. Mysticism points in turn to the three ways of Contemplative Prayer, which are the Purgative, the Illuminative, and the Unitive. In a purely human contemplative the way of Contemplative Prayer starts with the Purgative Way, which leads to the Illuminative Way, ending in the Unitive Way, the summit of which St. Teresa of Avila calls the Spiritual Marriage of the Seventh Mansions.
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When we look at the life of Christ it is the mirror image of this progression. His life in mortal flesh starts in the unique perfect union of the Hypostatic Union at the Incarnation and ends in purgation with His Passion and Death on the Cross at Calvary.
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To me the Incarnation is a Prayer of Union. We Catholics call Mary the Spouse of the Holy Spirit. This agrees with the Spiritual Marriage of the Seventh Mansions. The Immaculate Conception and Mary’s Seven Sorrows satisfy the Purgative Way. When you add in Mary’s fiat at the Annunciation this produces the conformity of wills that makes it possible for her being to be fully illuminated by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit during the Incarnation. Like Christ, Mary’s publicly recorded ministry starts in union with the Incarnation, and she participates in the Purgative Way with Christ in His Passion and Death. Christ and Mary’s lives follow a similar mirror image path. This mystical analysis appears to agree with the Catholic Church’s teaching as to mode of operation of the Immaculate Conception. It all centers on the Death of Christ on the Cross.

Posted by Peggy on Saturday, Apr, 19, 2014 6:11 PM (EST):

SDG,

Again, thank you for your response.

a) I respect your “point-missing caricature” as a point-missing caricature.

b) When I wrote “idioms”, I’d already read the Catholic Encyclopedia article and already consulted dictionaries as well. I was not writing in ignorance of the fact that the word has multiple senses. To the contrary, I wrote specifically and expressly with that fact and purpose in mind, as it (along with your post and responses) serves the point of my question and yours.

c) I also already knew the meaning of “scandal” in Catholic moral theology, and when I asked, “When you say ‘shock’, may that mean scandal?”, I was neither asking for a definition of the word “shock” nor was I using “scandal” to mean “upsetting or shocking people”. Indeed, when I spoke of “scandal”, I referred specifically to Jeremy’s question: “I refer to Jeremy’s statement that your response did not well address: ‘what are the possible doctrinal errors that could result from a simple misunderstanding of that phrase? [...] We get deeply concerned when we see our brothers and sisters in Christ fall into what we perceive to be error. That is really the core of our disagreement here.’”

That you now ask me “What sins do you think Catholics are tempting people to commit…” is a rehash of the question that Jeremy and I have already asked you. Nevertheless, perhaps you might begin by recognizing sins that are easily possible in connection with your “hostile” and “prickly” interpretations, and anyone’s “argumentative fumblings”.

d) I’m seeing little evidence that “discussion, explanation and efforts at mutual understanding” will “overcome communication problems” so much as create and compound them. You claim “The way to overcome communication problems is not for Christians or others to drop the ways in which they have expressed themselves for centuries,” but what proof is that? Need I remind that sin, scandal and poor/rotten communication are also among “the ways in which Christians have expressed themselves for centuries”. Meanwhile, “dropping it” can be useful, even “essential” in overcoming communications problems. And every day and in virtually every discussion, “we” in fact “drop language that could or has been misunderstood and has led to problems”. When done appropriately, it’s not “gutting the DNA of Christian self-understanding and historic identity” but helping to preserve it. Your “centuries” might seem a long time to you, but it’s a blip in the larger scale of time. Tradition, like language, is subject to change in that it is continually establishing itself, and not already defined or stuck in time.

a) I didn’t miss the way you phrased your question about “thinking it’s important to shock people with vague language.” I ignored it as a point-missing caricature of what I said. It was that question that prompted my prickly initial question to you, a question still very much open in my mind.

b) “Idioms” does not here mean what it seems to me you may think it means, if you are taking it in the sense of conventional phrases with established, presumably nonliteral senses. The communication of idioms with respect to the dual natures of Christ covers brand-new phrases uttered for the first time. Read the Catholic Encyclopedia article I linked to in my blog post for a fuller explanation.

c) Scandal, in Catholic moral theology, does not mean upsetting or shocking people, but refers to offering occasions of sin to others through bad moral example, i.e., through sinful acts, in fact or in appearance, or acts that tempt others to go astray through the weakness of their consciences. (These latter are to be avoided unless there is sufficient reason to act otherwise, which, per d) below, I certainly think there is in this case.) What sins do you think Catholics are tempting people to commit by imitation by saying that God died on Good Friday or calling Mary Theotokos?

d) The way to overcome communication problems is via discussion, explanation and efforts at mutual understanding, an endeavor in which this very blog post is an exercise. The way to overcome communication problems is not for Christians or others to drop the ways in which they have expressed themselves for centuries. The glorious hymns quoted above from Wesley and Watts, the Theotokos which has been a cornerstone of Christian self-expression since the 5th-century Council of Ephesus, are not “problematic.” They are an essential part of Christian self-expression and self-identification.

If we were to drop any language that could or has been misunderstood and has led to problems, we would have to drop the language of the Holy Trinity and the most basic of Christological concepts, that Jesus is the Son of God the Father, since from the time of Muhammed these have been badly misunderstood, in errors codified in the Quran itself. The program of dropping all such language cannot be carried out without gutting the DNA of Christian self-understanding and historic identity. There is no way forward in that direction.

Posted by Jeremy on Friday, Apr, 18, 2014 10:15 PM (EST):

SDG,

I do agree that we are in agreement on the key points of the doctrine of the incarnation. And I do understand your point about the shocking nature of these truths. As Paul points out, they are foolishness to the natural man. I can appreciate the necessity of sometimes shocking the world, as it were. Has anything been more shocking to the world than Christ’s resurrection? as Flannery O’Connor would say, sometimes we need to shout to those who are hard of hearing. And it seems both of us would agree that, while we are shouting, we should be vigilant to remain clear.

I can appreciate Christian tradition, and I can appreciate the Catholic respect for tradition. Ultimately, though, I don’t have as high a respect for that historical tradition as you do, and that is a point of departure that we are unlikely to quickly resolve, and that is perfectly fine. In this particular case, our agreements are probably more important than our disagreements.

I will say that our conversation has led me to study Catholic teaching (specifically the Catechism) in order to better understand your perspective. In doing so I have come to better appreciate the key doctrines on which we agree. We evangelicals can learn a lot from the Catholic approach to doctrine and tradition. All this is to say this debate has proved to be fruitful on my end. I greatly appreciate your patience and graciousness in all my argumentative fumblings.

Posted by Peggy on Friday, Apr, 18, 2014 9:41 PM (EST):

SDG, thank you for your response. I don’t know anything about your “hostility” or your “tone”. Perhaps they have something to do with your “excessive sensitivity”? I don’t know. I tend to talk simply, plainly and purposefully. I not only “made an effort to understand” you, but I also asked you “sincere questions” in an effort to understand you better, questions directly connected to your “one question” of “the communication of idioms…” I take note that you still haven’t answered any of them. For example, I did not ask you why you think shocking language is necessary or important. Instead, I asked why you think it’s important to shock people with vague language, “idioms” if you will, and about the issue of scandal. You say “anyone who doesn’t find Christian doctrine shocking either doesn’t understand it or has believe it so long that they no longer see it for what it is,” but that ignores the issues raised in my questions, namely that people may be “shocked” and scandalized NOT because “Christian doctrine is shocking” but because “communication of idioms” is problematic. And when there is miscommunication, there can be “substantial difference in understanding” and no “recognition that the issue here is not doctrine itself”, and even imagined “hostility”. I think Jeremy pointed to that too.

Did you make an effort to understand me, or are you adopting a hostile cross-examinatory tone for rhetorical or other reasons? Sincere question.

I thought I was clear why shocking language is necessary: to speak truthfully about shocking realities, to explore their implications, to make them alive to our imaginations. Anyone who doesn’t find Christian doctrine shocking either doesn’t understand it or has believed it so long that they no longer see it for what it is.

No, I’ll take a step back and make a larger statement: Reality is shocking. Striking, paradoxical language, language that highlights what is true in expected ways, that defamiliarizes the overly familiar and makes us see anew the strangeness of reality, or that sets off the most inexplicable or unimaginable facets of reality in ways that vividly express their strangeness, is vital to human curiosity and understanding. To cease to delight in oddness and paradox is to be, intellectually or spiritually, one foot in the grave.

I wrote this blog post to address one question: the communication of idioms in the two natures of Christ, which allows us to speak of God dying on the cross and Mary giving birth to God. Jeremy says his “uneasiness and hesitation here is predicated on my assumption (potentially false) that the title Theotokos is closely linked with the Catholic teaching of Immaculate Conception, a doctrine that most Evangelicals (including myself) would reject.” I completely get that concern (I was raised Protestant, and we did object to that one), but in fact from a Catholic point of view these two doctrines are not closely connected at all. For example, the Immaculate Conception is not accepted by the Eastern Orthodox or the historic Reformation churches, all of which accept the Theotokos.

Posted by Peggy on Friday, Apr, 18, 2014 1:47 PM (EST):

SDG, why do you think it’s “important” to “shock” people with vague phrases? And why do you characterize your shock phrases as “counter-intuitive” rather than their meaning is not well conveyed by the words you’ve chosen in your desire to “shock”? That “no formula or expression is self-sufficient when it comes to Deity”, does that mean all are appropriate? When you say “shock”, may that mean scandal? I refer to Jeremy’s statement that your response did not well address: “what are the possible doctrinal errors that could result from a simple misunderstanding of that phrase? [...] We get deeply concerned when we see our brothers and sisters in Christ fall into what we perceive to be error. That is really the core of our disagreement here.”

If you recognize that the issue here is not doctrine itself, but only the specificity or broadness of how we express doctrine, then it seems there is no substantial difference in understanding between us.

I would venture to suppose from this that you would be fine with saying “God the Son died on the cross for us”? Or “God the Son was born of Mary”? And therefore “Mary bore God the Son”?

I think it’s helpful to situate the question in the content of what I have called the glorious paradoxes of the Incarnation. To say “We worship a man” or “God died for us” is important precisely because it is so shocking, so counter-intuitive.

Can these phrases be misunderstood? Certainly. No formula or expression is self-sufficient when it comes to Deity. But statements like “God died for us” and “Mary gave birth to God” have an important place, both historically and theologically, in the larger world of Christian self-expression.

Posted by Peggy on Friday, Apr, 18, 2014 3:57 AM (EST):

Fast Food, I wasn’t proposing a “what if Christianity abandons” your beliefs about Jesus scenario. I only said I’m not sure that things would be different today “if Jesus were not the Son of God who died for our sins” but people nonetheless believed and acted as if he is. In that regard, what effectual difference is there whether Jesus actually resurrected from the dead or whether resurrection is “impossible for a mere man” or whether Jesus was a “mere man”, halfbreed alien from outer space, “Son of God”, fiction or whatever? You claim “then Christianity as presented by the Holy Catholic Church & her Holy Gospel & New Testament is both useless & meaningless”, but you refute that yourself when you cite “massively numerous great achievements”.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Friday, Apr, 18, 2014 3:42 AM (EST):

@Catholic Fast Food Worker: ...Exactly? Well, except that “before time and space” is meaningless, like saying “in a negative direction from our coordinate axis itself”. But otherwise, yes, that’s exactly what I was saying.

Tom in AZ, before & during the time of Jesus, many ancient Greek thinkers & Hellenized scholars were searching for the Ultimate Truth in the Cosmos. The Logos that made sense of everything. The Logos that explained why all the Order in the universe existed. The force that gave order to the cosmos & held it together. In John’s Gospel, the Eternal Logos of GOD is made Flesh & revealed to be Jesus of Nazareth. He is the Word (the order) in which Through that Word all things were made. Before time & space came to be was the Word. Before ANYTHING came to be was the Word.

Posted by Jeremy on Thursday, Apr, 17, 2014 11:34 PM (EST):

I don’t disagree with most all of what you say here. We both attest to the divinity of Christ. Neither of us would contest the fact that Jesus is fully God and fully man. So the one who was born of Mary was and is God. The one who died on the cross was and is God. I don’t see any point of doctrine here with which I would disagree with you (other than some very specific tangential points which are not relevant here).

The debate here is a matter of semantics. Specifically, it as matter of specificity. I implied it is “careless” to say “God” when we specifically mean “Christ”. A much better description is that we are being imprecise. Christ, who was fully God and fully man, died for our sins. We can certainly use the Christian shorthand “God died for our sins”, and not be doctrinally or logically incorrect. But that works only if we understand what exactly we are saying when we say that. It took you several sentences to work out some of the nuances of that phrase. There have been volumes written on the meaning of that phrase. My concern is how much is understood in that phrase alone, without any context. What does the person who has not a deep knowledge of Scripture and/or doctrine think when he hears that phrase? And what are the possible doctrinal errors that could result from a simple misunderstanding of that phrase?

We probably agree on almost all points of doctrine regarding the Trinity. God is three distinct persons in one. Each member of the Trinity, the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit, is fully God. So we can without error call any member of Trinity God. We can say that God was well-pleased with the Son. We can say that God shed his blood for the remission of sins. We can say that God indwells every believer, seals them, and is the pledge of their inheritance. But would we say that the Holy Spirit died on the Cross? Would we say that the Father was born of Mary? This is where we can fall into confusion by not being specific, and not acknowledging the roles of each member of the Godhead, which the Scriptures (the Cathecism for that matter) are clear to delineate. And it is as much of an error to fail the recognize the divinity of each. I understand this is part of what we are doing when we say that God died on the cross, or that is was God lying there in the manager in Bethlehem. We should understand that it was divinity that made the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. But we can and should do so without ambiguity as to which member of the Trinity was specifically doing those acts.

It is my strong conviction that we must speak about doctrinal matters with directness and perspicuity. Brevity and conciseness, while useful, are secondary considerations. I don’t feel that “God died for our sins”, or “Mary is the mother of God” are immediately clear and unmistakable in meaning, although they are succinct. You perceived my concerns when you note that “It probably wouldn’t be as big a deal for many Evangelicals, but for excessive sensitivity around the ancient, ecumenical Marian title of Theotokos, mother of God.” While I think the phrase “excessive sensitivity” is a bit hyperbolic, I would admit that my uneasiness and hesitation here is predicated on my assumption (potentially false) that the title Theotokos is closely linked with the Catholic teaching of Immaculate Conception, a doctrine that most Evangelicals (including myself) would reject. In other words, the loose and imprecise use of the name God feeds into that and other teachings, such as the undue exultation of Mary, which started this whole debate. That is really another debate, but it is germane here as it provides the context for my strong opposition to the phrase “God died for our sins”.

I am not trying to stir up more arguments here, or bring in issues that Catholics and Protestants have debated for centuries. Both of us are jealous for the truth. We are passionate about doctrine. We get deeply concerned when we see our brothers and sisters in Christ fall into what we perceive to be error. That is really the core of our disagreement here. At least, that is the driving force on my end. I don’t think the issue here is completely how we address and speak about the Godhead. The issue here is how this affects other doctrines that we hold dear. You seem to be concerned that a reticence in saying “God died for our sins” diminishes the doctrine of divinity of Christ. My concerns are listed above. I don’t know if there is a solution here other than for fellow Christians like us to continue to discuss these issues with an open mind, the mind of Christ.

Yup, Tony, Jesus is both Fully (100%) GOD & Fully (100%) Man. This is called the Hypostatic (Greek word) union. It is meant to be a Mystery of Faith. So because our minds & thoughts are finite (since we are finite creatures who live in a finite world), the Mysteries of our Faith (Incarnation, Trinity, Resurrection, Hypostatic Union) are impossible for us finite ones to reason them even as we partake of His Divinity through the Holy Mysteries (Sacraments). It is impossible for us humans to try & “think” our way into the Mysteries of our Catholic Faith, our minds would explode- we can’t hold infinity. According to Chesterton in “Orthodoxy”, the heretics are the ones who are incapable of accepting that God’s ways are Mysterious. They Deny Truths because they want to be able to “think” their way into them & be able to Control them. Heretics take a Truth (like the Trinity), strip Truth of its dignity & bring it down to a level that the human mind can understand (& therefore control). We are called to Experience & subject our selves to the Truth, not the other way around. “What is Truth?” Better yet, who is Truth? Truth is Christ Jesus. Happy Pascua!

Posted by Tom in AZ on Thursday, Apr, 17, 2014 11:19 PM (EST):

@Tony: “Logos” has a lot of meanings. One of them is “mind”; others include “reason” and “learning”, hence why we our words for “study of X” are so often “Greek word for X-ology”. In the Summa Theologica, Part I Question 34 Article 2, beginning of answer, it says, “‘Word,’ said of God in its proper sense, is used personally, and is the proper name of the person of the Son. For it signifies an emanation of the intellect: and the person Who proceeds in God, by way of emanation of the intellect, is called the Son; and this procession is called generation, as we have shown above (Question 27, Article 2). Hence it follows that the Son alone is properly called Word in God.”

Posted by Tony on Thursday, Apr, 17, 2014 10:37 PM (EST):

Jesus, as I understand it, was The Word who was with God from the beginning, became incarnate of the Virgin Mary in time, and at His death became fully united with the Father, being seated at His right hand.

Peggy, John, Without that nutshell (GOD made Flesh, Crucified & Risen; Love for us), Christianity destroys itself & ceases to exist very shortly. Without this, there is no Mystery, beauty or Truth to Christianity. There would be no point to Xty.

Peggy, If Christ had not died by Crucifixion & Resurrected 3 days later in the time of Gov. Pilate, Herod, & Caiaphas (two central & historic events that only the Begotten Son of the Living GOD can perform, impossible for a mere man), then the Christian religion would not exist to this day & things like Easter Bunnies (which were probably pagan but were “baptized” & preserved into Christianity) would most likely not be around to this day. The world would look a hellova lot different had the Church not existed. And the existence of the whole Holy Catholic Church rests on that single fact: that the only Begotten Son of GOD died for us & was Risen. This Church which was founded on some small little corner conquered by the Roman Empire, based on a crucified Messiah born of a Virgin Jewish girl, practiced by insignificant Jewish peasants & fishermen (who were nobodies in the eyes of the world or even the Empire & belonged to a religion that is still a tiny minority- Judaism), & who were persecuted & illegalized by the Romans, changed EVERYTHING & survives to this day to bear witness to Truth.
Peggy, & somehow this Church was able to not only become legal (Edict of Milan, 300s AD), but SURVIVE to this very day even after seeing the collapse of so many central powers- Romans, Soviets, Nazi, Communists, Barbarians, Persians, Ottomans, & most likely (though sadly) also the USA in the future. Christianity has fed more people, educated more people, done more acts of mercy & charity, done much more for the ARTS, literature, music & academic world, changed the face of the earth, led more people to true peace & love, & has moved more humans’ hearts & souls than anything else. Had Christianity abandoned this small Truth (the Eternal Logos of GOD made Flesh for us, Crucified & Risen) these massively numerous great achievements would not have been possible & Christianity would have perished a LONG time ago. This fact is what made all these innumerable stuff possible.

Posted by Peggy on Thursday, Apr, 17, 2014 9:18 PM (EST):

Fast Food, “if Jesus were not the Son of God who died for our sins”, I’m not sure it would be any different than it is now. Likewise, “if the Easter Bunny wasn’t born from the pastel colored egg of a virgin hen,” what does that change? The stores are still full of Easter Bunny this and that anyway.

John, that’d be dumb. If Jesus were not the Son of God who died for our sins (which is the only Truth), & instead was simply just a simple prophet, then Christianity would be no different than Islam (heresy), Judaism, Buddhism (that has a prophet-like siddharta), Sikkhism, etc. If Jesus is not both fully God & fully man, then Christianity as presented by the Holy Catholic Church & her Holy Gospel & New Testament is both useless & meaningless. There would not have been a need for all the Martyrs for the true Faith (thus their blood & sacrifice were worthless) & for the Church’s unbroken 2000+ years of consistent witness. If Christianity stops proclaiming the only Truth (Christ Jesus as the Word/Logos of GOD made Flesh- Incarnation), then Christianity fulfilled nothing & should cease to exist immediately! John, think a little. Use your noodles in between your ears more often, with all due respect.

Posted by John on Thursday, Apr, 17, 2014 5:37 PM (EST):

BETTER STILL—JUST admit THAT GOD IS ONE—AND DID not AH, HAVE A SO-CALLED SON, DUH!

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With David DiCerto, he co-hosts the Gabriel Award–winning cable TV show “Reel Faith” for New Evangelization Television. Steven has degrees in media arts and religious studies, and has contributed several entries to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, including “The Church and Film” and a number of filmmaker biographies. He has also written about film for the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy.

He has a BFA in Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, an MA in Religious Studies from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, PA, and an MA in Theology from Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ.

Steven’s writing for the Register has been recognized three times by the Catholic Press Association awards, with two first-place wins in 2017 and 2016 and a second-place win in 2015.